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I traded forex for a year or two before giving up on it. I made steady profits in 2008-2009 because everything was trending in one direction (or the other), but then I steadily started losing money. In the end I was losing more money than I was making. The volatility will wipe you out and unless you plan on staying in front of your computer a lot, it's going to be very hard! It's definitely possible to make money in the Yen right now, but when currencies go sideways it's hard.

Do yourself a favor and come to /r/Forex to ask FX related questions, as all you'll get here is people saying it's a zero sum game and that you should buy Vanguard funds instead.

As to your question, it's easier to day/swingtrade than the stock market, but not easier to invest. It really depends on what you're trying to do and how much time you want to spend in front of your charts.

I have traded forex for several years. More or less I advise you to paper trade a year before investing money. I think the way the market is now it is easier to make money elsewhere. I am up 7% on the year but that may very well not last. Pro traders are going to be looking at the order book and be paying for top level research reports. They will be paying less transaction costs than you too. Even pro traders will have draw down, losing months, losing years.

Are you talking about active trading, or passive investing? I like to distinguish the two words (trading/investing) as I believe most active traders end up either breaking even or losing after everything is said and done over the long term (forex or otherwise). Of course some people do make money, but as a whole I have yet to see any quantifiable data that suggests the average active trader, using forex as a means of income rather than hedging currency risk, will make money long term. I would be very interested in seeing anything that proves otherwise.

Oh, I was wondering when I'd read the first pro poker player posting on this /r/. I'm a stocks pro and have played poker a lot for a while, and I always found the two to be extremely related with regards to the skills you need to succeed. All about finding the right spots, and managing not to lose too much in between them.

It's not zero sum because people trade for all sorts of reasons, different intentions, in order to hedge different risks on all different timeframes not to mention commercial traders and large traders tend to trade in opposite directions, and retail traders who could be doing anything from scalping the 1 minute chart to buying/selling based off of the 4 hour/daily charts calling it zero sum is wrong because there's so many different players who are all doing different things for a variety of different reasons you can't assume everyone is trading vs each other on some level playing field to come out ahead in their daytrading profits.

Quick example: I could go short EUR/USD, and if the pair goes down that counts as a win for me, however it could also reverse and go back up and cause a win for the other trader's long position assuming he was not stopped out by the initial down movement, and the broker wins too due to the spread. Just the existence of different timeframes and the fact that you're not trading 1v1 but with a broker and the fact that you can exit or open new positions all the time negates the idea of a zero sum game, there's so many variations that can occur in which you and whoever you bought/sold to are both winners.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Take the simplest form of investing. 10 people join together to start a company, each investing $100,000. After the company is established, they are each earning $35,000 per year. An investor who sees potential in the start up offers to purchase the company for $3 million. Where is the equal loss and gain in this scenario? You can create wealth by growing markets and being innovative, making it nothing like a a zero sum game.

In order for money to be made, someone has to give it to you. And in order for you to make money in stocks, someone has to sell those stocks to you. And when you sell, someone has to buy. Hence, zero sum. Money doesn't magically appear.

Assuming a constant money supply, any return on your investment would have to mean a loss to someone else's investment.

And assuming a constant number of thoughts in the world, anything you think of would result in someone else forgetting where they left their keys. Fortunately that's not a realistic or even relevant assumption.

Not only is the money supply not constant, but neither is the amount of value represented by one unit of money.

For every business that thrives and makes the most out of its capital, there are 2 or 3 businesses that waste money and fold within a year or two.

Yeah, that's not how it works. Productivity improvements eventually benefit the entire industry. They also benefit other vertically-related industries.

If anything you're saying were true, all 7 billion of us would still be sharing the GDP of the cro-magnon period, resulting in each contemporary human being able to afford a meal once every 6 months.